https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/join-miles-ahead-a-don-cheadle-film
Great idea! My first reaction is that I can deal without the hiphop artists, but then again, I miss hiphop jazz.
Category Archives: news
Asante Sana, Raymond Boone
A true Black press journalistic warrior has passed. I know Hazel Trice Edney, his protégé, will keep his legacy alive, as will his family. He was legend.
Ray Boone, Crusading Editor, ‘Champion’ Journalist, Dead at 76
By Jeremy M. Lazarus
(Richmond Free Press) – Raymond Harold “Ray” Boone had a snappy response when the infuriated commander at an Army outpost in South Carolina threatened to lock him in the stockade for staying seated when the band played the Southern anthem “Dixie.”
“Let’s go,” Boone, then a corporal, told the furious officer who backed down and let him off with a warning.
With his dander up, Boone sent a letter detailing the situation to then powerhouse New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., whom he knew.
That resulted in a call from the White House to the commander questioning his actions toward Mr. Boone and his order that soldiers stand at attention for the song. Mr. Boone had no further problems.
That story from Boone’s experience in the military speaks volumes about his fearless approach to dealing with wrongs – as a journalist for more than 60 years and as a person. The dapper founding editor/publisher of The Richmond Free Press refused to be intimidated during his 22 years at the helm – seeing himself as continuing the legacy of his journalism hero, John Mitchell Jr., the “fighting editor” of the Richmond Planet who carried pistols and dared White supremacists to lynch him for writing about the injustices of his day.
A true believer in the First Amendment and the U.S. Constitution, Boone vigorously championed democratic values, with an emphasis on justice and equality for all, never forgetting the harsh segregation conditions he dealt with growing up in his native Suffolk.
As one of his admirers put it, “he was the undisputed, undefeated heavyweight champion of journalistic pugilism.”
Boone’s role as an influential community leader ended Tuesday, June 3, 2014, when he lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. He died “peacefully in his sleep with a smile on his face,” said Jean Patterson Boone, his wife of 47 years and Free Press president of advertising. He was 76.
She vowed to continue “to operate the newspaper and maintain its mission to promote equality and fairness. That is the best way to honor my husband.”
Boone was active in the newspaper almost until the end, said his daughter Regina H. Boone, a photographer with The Detroit Free Press. “He knew what was going on. He was talking about what the headlines should be” for the May 29 edition, she said.
Boone built the newspaper into one of the largest weekly newspapers in the state in striving for lively reporting and strong opinions. He was involved in a variety of crusades. He named his longest running campaign “Vote with your dollars” to encourage readers to use their spending power to reward companies that catered to them and to punish those that didn’t.
He also sought to brighten the city during the winter with his “Love Lights” campaign. Boone also pushed, poked and prodded governors, legislators, mayors and council members to do more business with Black-owned and minority firms. That pushing led former Gov. Mark Warner to investigate how well the state was doing and to overhaul Virginia’s program after a study shockingly found that less than one-half of one percent of state spending for goods and services went to Black and minority businesses.
As a result of The Free Press crusade, Mayor Dwight C. Jones set a 40 percent goal for minority business inclusion on major city projects, such as the construction of the new jail and four new schools.
Boone made up his own mind about issues and was ready to take his stand no matter what. Last year, for example, he announced The Free Press would no longer use the name of the highly popular Washington pro football team, calling it a racist insult to Native Americans.
And he called for the ouster of Roslyn M. Brock, the NAACP’s national chairwoman, accusing her of being tepid in her efforts to address the team’s nickname and for failing to address discriminatory practices of the team because her employer, the Bon Secours Health System, was financially involved in developing the team’s new Richmond training camp.
Three years ago, when protests over the country’s income disparities reached its peak, he opened the front lawn of his South Side home to members of the Occupy Richmond movement after Mayor Jones evicted occupiers from a Downtown park. The action was a poke at the mayor who lived next door. Boone and the occupiers ended the protest over corporate control before the city cited him for a zoning violation.
Boone used his editorial page to chastise now deceased Chief Court Justice Leroy R. Hassell Sr. over Black news media access to cover ceremonies and proudly declared victory when new Justice Cleo Powell allowed Free Press photographer Sandra Sellars to cover her investiture, a first for a Black newspaper.
There were plenty of others he took to task, among them former Virginia Commonwealth University President Eugene P. Trani, whom he repeatedly bashed for failing to diversify the school’s leadership.
Boone always credited the education he received in the segregated schools in Suffolk. “It was preached that you could be segregated physically, but you could not be segregated mentally,” he told an interviewer in 2003, “and if you did well in education and you were disciplined, you could overcome the tremendous barriers you faced.”
He followed that mantra, absorbing books and becoming a walking encyclopedia of Black history. Boone said his interest in journalism developed after one of his teachers “told me I could write.”
At East Suffolk High School, his direction was set when he found there was no newspaper and yearbook and started both. He saw this as an opportunity, he once said, “to put our school on the map.”
He took his biggest step into a newspaper career when he approached the local newspaper, the daily Suffolk News-Herald, about writing stories about sports at the Black high schools. The newspaper had never covered those stories and allowed him to be their correspondent. His stories began appearing on the sports pages, a first for news about the Black community,all of which had previously been relegated to the “colored” pages.
Boone continued to write for the daily while studying at Norfolk State University. He later transferred to Boston University, where he earned his degree while also working as city editor for The Boston Chronicle and as a reporter for The Quincy Patriot-Ledger to pay his way.
He often would tell stories of being short of money and of mixing packets of ketchup into a cup of hot water to create soup. Following his graduation, he went to Tuskegee, Ala., to work as director of public information. Called into service, he joined The Baltimore Afro-American after he was honorably discharged and became the White House reporter for then one of the largest Black-owned papers in the country.
In 1965, he was sent to Richmond to become the editor of the paper’s Richmond edition and began his rise to prominence. He quickly became a partner with the founders and leaders of the Richmond Crusade for Voters, Dr. William S. Thornton, John Brooks, Dr. William Ferguson Reid, in seeking to boost the power and influence of the black community on the political stage.
He was instrumental in enabling Dr. Reid in 1967 to become the first Black person elected to the General Assembly in the 20th century. From future Gov. L. Douglas Wilder to future Richmond Mayor and state Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, Boone used the newspaper to open doors for a new generation of politicians and to promote jobs and education.
He also was involved in creating the Frederick Douglass Program in 1969 to help train young Black men and women for careers in journalism.
Boone would go on to become vice president of The Afro-American chain where he was responsible for multiple editions. Time magazine credited him with bringing “sophistication and verve” to the Black press.
He was proud of sending Afro-American reporter William Worthy to Iran after the overthrow of the shah to provide reports on the revolution. By 1981, Boone moved on to teach journalism at Howard University in Washington before returning to Richmond in 1992 to begin his own newspaper.
While serving as a Pulitzer Prize juror on two separate occasions, he spearheaded a successful effort that resulted in the placement of African-Americans and women on the Pulitzer board at Columbia University. He had contacts galore across the country as a life member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, the National Association of Guardsmen, the National Newspaper Publishers Association and many other organizations.
Along with his wife and daughter, survivors include his son, Raymond H. Boone Jr., Free Press director of account resolution and new business development; his grandson, Raymond H. Boone III; a sister-in-law, Phyllis Riley; seven aunts, one devoted, Dorothy Boone of Suffolk; two uncles; a half-brother, Thurman Boone of Suffolk; four half-sisters, Geneva B. Boone, of Hopewell, Geraldine Boone Clark of Richmond, and Ira Boone and Lolethia Boone, both of Suffolk, and many other cousins, nieces and nephews.
As “Beauty and the Beast” (Re-)Premieres Tonight, This Fan Just Wants To Say……
…..stuff like this is what Ann Hornaday was talking about. (Here is Seth Rogen’s response and a link to a Hornaday defense.)
Tess attracted enough to J.T., the computer and science geek, to sleep with him? (And being disappointed that he’s not in deep? And that he wouldn’t be in deep?) Never in a million years, but it makes me happy and hopeful, though! LMAO! 🙂
POST-VIEWING UPDATE: Of course he wanted the relationship! He’s not stupid! LOL!
Asanta Sana, Yuri Kochiyama
Yet one more witness to Malcolm’s assassination, and yet another radical activist, gone.
YURI KOCHIYAMA: A Life in Struggle
[col. writ. 6/2/14] © ’14 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Her name was Yuri, a Japanese woman born in the United States. I hesitate to call her a Japanese-American, for to do so suggests she was a citizen.
In light of how she, her family and her community were treated during World War II, especially after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, to call any of them citizens would be an exaggeration.
Yuri was barely 20 when she, her parents, her brothers and the Japanese living on the West Coast – some 110,000 children, women and men – were forced to leave their homes, their schools, their jobs and businesses, and were transported to concentration camps in the nation’s interior.
Two-thirds of these people (like Yuri) were born in the United States, and thus American citizens according to the Constitution.
This meant nothing. They were Japanese – that was enough.
She remembered her experiences in those camps as a naïve banana (yellow on the outside, white on the inside). She recounted to oral historians:
I was red, white, and blue when I was growing up. I taught Sunday school, and was very, very American. But I was also provincial. We were just kids rooting for our high school…..
Everything changed for me on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. On that very day –December 7th, the FBI came and took my father. He had just come home from the hospital the day before. For several days we didn’t know where they had taken him. Then we found out that he was taken to the Federal prison at Terminal Island. Overnight, things changed for us. *
In December, 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “military necessity” was the basis of the mass evacuation and detention of tens of thousands of in the Korematsu case.
Yuri would later become a strong supporter of Malcolm X, and the Black Freedom Movement. She joined and worked in various liberation organizations and grew to become an icon of the Black Freedom and Asian-American rights movements.
Born Yuri Nakahara on May 19, 1921 (4 years to the date before Malcolm was born), she married Bill Kochiyama. The Kochiyamas moved to Harlem in 1960, where they worked for the civil rights movement, in education and fair housing practices.
Yuri Kochiyama, freedom fighter, after 93 summers, has become an ancestor.
–© ’14 maj
[*Zinn, Howard and Anthony Arnove, Voices of a People’s History of the United States, 2nd ed. (NY, 7 Stories Press, 2009)]
Was I The Only Person Who Missed “Reading Rainbow?”
(And here’s Lavar answering some shade thrown by The Washington Post about his venture being for-profit)
And, just for fun:
Libraries Burning To The Ground, Everywhere (Maya Angelou)
(Wo)Man….. 😦
From today’s “Democracy Now!” :
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We devote much of today’s program to honoring the life and legacy of the writer and activist Maya Angelou. She died Wednesday at her home in North Carolina. She was 86 years old. Her son, Guy Johnson, issued a statement that she, quote, “lived a life as a teacher, activist, artist and human being. She was a warrior for equality, tolerance and peace.”
Born Marguerite Ann Johnson in St. Louis, Maya Angelou grew up in Arkansas in the Jim Crow South. At the age of seven or eight, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. He was killed shortly thereafter. As a result of the trauma, she remained virtually silent for five years, speaking only to her brother.
She became a mother at age 17. In the 1950s and ’60s she went on to become an actress, singer and dancer. After she fell in love with a South African civil rights activist, they moved to Cairo. She later lived in Ghana, where she met Malcolm X, and the two collaborated on developing his Organization of Afro-American Unity. She returned to the U.S. to support the effort, but Malcolm X was assassinated shortly after her return.
AMY GOODMAN: That tragedy and the 1968 assassination of her friend, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., devastated Angelou. It was in 1969 she was encouraged by the author James Baldwin, among others, to focus on her writing. Thus was born “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” her first of seven autobiographies and the phenomenal career for which she is known around the world. Maya Angelou was also an award-winning people’s poet. This is Maya Angelou in her own words, as she reads one of her most celebrated poems, “Still I Rise.”
MAYA ANGELOU:You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
Just ’cause I walk as if I have oil wells
Pumping in my living room.Just like suns and like moons,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I rise.Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?Does my sassiness upset you?
Don’t take it so hard
Just ’cause I laugh as if I have gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.You can shoot me with your words,
You can cut me with your lies,
You can kill me with your hatefulness,
But just like life, I’ll rise.Does my sexiness offend you?
Oh, does it come as a surprise
That I dance as if I have diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past rooted in pain
I rise
A black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak miraculously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the hope and the dream of the slave.
And so, naturally, there I go rising.JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Maya Angelou, reading from her poem “Still I Rise.” In 1993, she recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration. She was the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost did so at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961.
MAYA ANGELOU: Mr. President and Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Vice President and Mrs. Gore, and Americans everywhere:
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the Rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveler, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You, Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You, Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers—desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
You, the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours—your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me,
The Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes,
And into your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.AMY GOODMAN: Maya Angelou, reciting the poem she wrote for Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, “On the Pulse of Morning.” Eight years later, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When we come back, we’ll be joined by Maya Angelou’s close friend, Sonia Sanchez, the renowned writer, poet, playwright and activist.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Run Joe” by Maya Angelou from her 1957 album “Miss Calypso”. By the way, over the years Democracy Now! featured Angelou’s tributes to Fanny Lou Hamer, Ossie Davis, Correta Scott King, Max Roach and Nelson Mandela. You can go to our website to see all of her selected speeches from eulogies our archives with full transcripts at democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. I’m Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re joined now by Maya Angelou’s close friend Sonia Sanchez. Sonia was a renowned writer, poet, playwright, activist and one of the foremost leaders of the Black Studies and the Black Arts movement. She is the author of 20 books including “Morning Haiku,” “Shake Loose My Skin,” and “Homegirls and Hand Grenades.”
AMY GOODMAN: Sonia Sanchez joins me here in Philadelphia. We welcome you back to Democracy Now! It is such a pleasant to be with you in person, though sad on this occasion, Maya Angelou’s death. Maya Angelou lived 86 years, she died in North Carolina. Talk about how you first met her and share your reflections about her life and her contributions.
SONIA SANCHEZ: It’s going being her sister, Amy, and you are right, it is a very sad occasion, but anytime I can hear and see her perform, you know that she will live forever. I first met Sister Maya in the 1960’s. That was period when we were all gathering together to change the world. I saw her on a couple of occasions at affairs where we all read our poetry. I most especially remember her in the play “The Blacks.” She came out in her tall, six feet majesty, and you were just stricken by her, by her beauty and by her grace. And I still have in my memory, when Lumumba was killed, Louise Meriwether and Sister Maya, climbing, going over the walls there at the U.N. They were protesting. To have seen that, you stood there in awe.
AMY GOODMAN: The first president of the Congo.
SONIA SANCHEZ: Yes, Lumumba.
AMY GOODMAN: The democratically elected president of the Congo.
SONIA SANCHEZ: It was an amazing moment to see the resistance that they were doing there in New York City at the U.N. But over the years, I got to know her in so many ways on the road, when we read together at various occasions and going to her home there in North Carolina when she was given her birthday parties. Sister Oparah would give birthday parties for her. And she had everybody you can imagine. You imagine that person, that person was there at Sister Maya’s house in North Carolina for birthday parties. You could call her on the telephone and cry and say, what a terrible mistake I made. You could call and say, I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, and she will listen and say, dear, dear, Sonia, you need to come on down here to the house and just rest for a while and sleep. You need for me to cook you some good food.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Sonia Sanchez, she lived in a lot of pain. She was raped and she was a child. The rapist was her mother’s boyfriend, he was murdered. Is it true she stopped talking for five years to everyone but her brother?
SONIA SANCHEZ: That is what we were told. This is an interesting thing, this idea of people not talking. Audrey Lloyd also stopped talking at some point in her life. When my grandmother died, the trauma was so great that I began to stutter. I was the child that went … I. And Luckily enough, that stutter saved me a great deal because my sister and I after my grandmother died, were sent to house to house to house. As I walked into the house, it was announced, oh here’s Pat, she’s the beautiful one, my sister, and here comes S-s-s-sonia, so just give her a book and put her in a corner. So, it’s amazing, but I think that when you don’t speak, when you’re quite like that, you’re filtering out perhaps all of the damage that was done to you, all the pain gets filtered out. Finally when you do speak, you are healed.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sonia Sanchez, I wanted to ask you, Maya Angelou was already an accomplished singer, dancer, actress, but then she gets involved in the civil rights movement. Could you talk about the relationship between her art and her activism? She worked with both Martin Luther King and then with Malcolm X later.
SONIA SANCHEZ: There was no separation for us between our art and activism at all. Sister Bernice Reagon talks about the blues singer Montgomery who said we all come here naked. Even though we all come here naked, one of the things we have to do is we have to make arrangements for other people beyond ourselves. This is what she did. Yes, and she raised so much money for the civil rights movement. People forget that. She and Brother Harry Belafonte raised money because the movement needed money. Yes, she marched and did all these things that other people did and she wrote and she knew brother Malcolm, she knew Brother Martin, she was in Africa, she knew Nkrumah. This is a woman who simply at some point moved constantly with her art and activism and saw no problem with the two of them.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Maya Angelou talking about her close friend Coretta Scott King. The two shared a close bond as Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on Maya Angelou’s birthday. They would talk every year on that date, April 4. In 2006, Maya Angelou spoke at Coretta Scott King’s funeral in Georgia.
MAYA ANGELOU: On those late nights when Coretta and I would talk, I would make her laugh. And she said that Martin King used to tell her, you don’t laugh enough. There is a recent book out about sisters in which she spoke about her blood sister. At the end of her essay she said I do have a chosen sister— Maya Angelou, who makes me laugh even when I don’t want to. And it is true. I told her some jokes, jokes only for no mixed company. Many times on those late evenings, she would say to me, “Sister, it shouldn’t be an either or, should it? Peace and justice should belong to all people everywhere all the time. Isn’t that right?” And I said then and I say now, Coretta Scott King, you are absolutely right. I do believe that peace and justice should belong to every person, everywhere, all the time.
Those of us who gather here, principalities, presidents, senators, those of us who run great companies, who know something about being parents, who know something about being preachers and teachers, those of us, we owe something from this minute on. So that this gathering is not just another footnote on the pages of history. We owe something. I pledge to you, my sister, I will never cease. I mean to say, I want to see a better world. I mean to say, I want to see some peace somewhere. I mean to say, I want to see some honesty, some fair play. I want to see kindness and justice. This is what I want to see. I want to see it through my eyes and through your eyes, Coretta Scott King. [singing] I open my mouth to the Lord, and I won’t turn back. No I will go. I shall go. I’ll see what the end is going to be. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Maya Angelou speaking in 2006 at Coretta Scott King’s funeral. And this is her speaking in 2011 around the time when she was awarded the presidential medal of freedom.
MAYA ANGELOU: What I thought about first, this morning, actually, is how wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times. We have actually enslaved people and been enslaved. And we have actually liberated people and been liberated. Amazing. Amazing. If I had my druthers, I’d rather be born black, American, female in the 20th century. And I was. What a luck I have. I’m trying to be a Christian. And trying to be a Christian is like trying to be a jew or Buddhist or Muslim or Shintoist. I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, I’m a Christian. I think, already? You already got it? I’m working at it. Which means that, I try to be as kind and fair and generous and respectful and courteous to every human being. Seeing myself as him, not as his keeper or her keeper, but really seeing myself. Black, white, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native American — I try to treat everybody as I want to be treated. And that is no small matter. Really, that is trying to be an American because we have to say, I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me. The statement is made by a Terence in 154 B.C. — black man, a slave sold to a senator. He was freed by that senator. This man became the most popular playwright in Rome. Five of his plays and that one statement have come down to us from 154 B.C., I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me. And by the time I leave my students and they leave me, some of — they have ingested some part of that, and they can never be the same. Be proud, not haughty, but proud of what you have achieved. And see the future as your career, your job. This is not a rehearsal. This is your life.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Maya Angelou speaking in 2011 around the time she was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. Sonia Sanchez, among the many collaborations that you had with your friend Maya Angelou over many years was on a peace mural in Philadelphia. Could you talk about that?
SONIA SANCHEZ: Oh, yes. I became the Poet Laureate here in Philadelphia. One of the things that I wanted to do — the first thing was to have a peace mural. So, I called Sister Maya and Sister Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and I said, I want you to send me three lines about peace. And they did immediately. I got in contact with Brother Carmen and we also put some — three lines from Brother Martin and Sister Bernice Reagon. It is a beautiful mural. We ended up doing a book also called “Peace is a Haiku Song.” Sister maya said to me, Sonia, good, do that, we need peace. One of the things we wanted to do was to have her words there. I chose words from her book “Amazing Peace,” a Christmas poem that she had put out. So, If you’re ever in Philadelphia, come too Broad and Christian Street and you’ll see this beautiful mural with the words of these women and these men, simply talking about peace. Because peace is indeed a right for all of us on this earth. Our dear Sister Maya was a peace warrior. She was a cultural worker. She was a woman who insisted the way Max Roach and Abby Lincoln instead about peace. Freedom now, peace now, we insist.
AMY GOODMAN: Her radical nature — Maya Angelou’s — now as she’s being remembered, she read the poem at the presidential inauguration. As you said, climbing over the wall for Lumumba, the assassinated president of Congo. Befriending Fidel Castro in Cuba. Meeting Malcolm X in Africa, coming back with them to help him organize The Organisation of African Unity, we’re not hearing as much about it.
SONIA SANCHEZ: That is what you do as an activist. She always said simply, we have to listen to everyone’s story. We have to be involved with everyone. We cannot separate ourselves. So, she spoke at the Million Man March, if you remember that march. She was there with a problem. She was always every place. Anyplace there was any action, we used to say, you would find sister maya there, constantly talking, constantly entreating people to find a way to resolve and solve problems.
AMY GOODMAN: Her books, some have been banned from libraries as she unflinchingly described her life and the experience of people, African-Americans, and others. I remember when I was in high school, our library invited Maya Angelou to speak. Hundreds of people came out, a rainbow of people. She didn’t just be, she spoke, she sang, she danced, and she moved everyone together.
SONIA SANCHEZ: My dear sister, when she got on stage, she would start off with — we do it ourselves too. I started one of the programs, “woke up this morning with my eyes on Maya, woke up this morning with my eyes on Maya, woke up this morning with my eyes on Maya, going to resist, going to love, going to resist just like her, her, her. We learn how to mix the song and the poem and the poetry and the love. People came in rain to see her. When I brought her to Temple University, there were 3000 people standing up waiting to hear her. There were little children lined up who recited her poetry. This is, was, a great woman. When I was told yesterday that she had made transition. I sat up in my bed and I said, Na nga def? Sister Maya, Na nga def? It was important to say, how are you, dear sister? I heard a voice say, maa ngi fi rekk, Maa ngi fi rekk. I am well, I am well, I am well. And we are well because this great woman walked on this earth, my dear sister.
AMY GOODMAN: We are going to end with Maya Angelou’s own words. In 2005, she spoke at Riverside Church in Harlem during the funeral of Ossie Davis, the famous actor, director, activist. He and his wife Ruby Dee were renowned civil rights activists. In her address, Maya Angelou reads from her poem “When Great Trees Fall.”
MAYA ANGELOU: When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder. Lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests small things recoil into silence, their senses are eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes sterile, light rare. We breathe briefly. Our eyes briefly see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines gnaws on kind words unsaid, on promised walks not taken. Great souls die, and our reality bound to them takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon them, upon their nature, upon their nurture, now shrink wizened. Our minds formed and informed by their radiance seems to fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable silence of dark, cold caves. And then our memory comes to us again in the form of a spirit, and it is the spirit of our beloved. It appears draped in the wisdom of DuBois, furnished in the humor and the grace of Paul Laurence Dunbar. We hear the insight of Frederick Douglass and the boldness of Marcus Garvey. We see our beloved standing before us as a light, as a beacon, indeed, as a way. We are not so much reduced. Suddenly the peace blooms around us. It is strange. It blooms slowly, always irregularly. Space is filled with a kind of soothing electric vibration. We see the spirit, and we know our senses. We change, resolved, never to be the same. They whisper to us from the spirit. Remember, he existed. He existed. He belonged to us. He exists in us. We can be, and be more, every day more. Larger, kinder, truer, more honest, more courageous, and more loving because Ossie Davis existed and belonged to all of us.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Maya Angelou, in 2005, speaking at Riverside Church, remembering the famous actor and activist Ossie Davis who is survived by his wife Ruby Dee, also a well known activist and actor. As we remember Maya Angelou today, she died yesterday at her home in North Carolina at the age of 86.
A more expanded, and more touching, version of the story above can be found at 39:37 to 42:28 of the Dave Chappelle dialogue with Angelou.
I look forward to the PBS’ “American Masters” documentary in 2016.
112-Word Film Reviews (In Total): “Amazing Spider-Man 2” and “X-Men: Days of Future Past”
Spent so much time discussing Newark politics and legacies of new Ancestors, I’m glad to get back to geek stuff! 🙂
I find it interesting that so many film critics are having problems with this Spider-Man. (A “Spider-Man” film getting a “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes? Hide, Irving Forbush!)
Yes, this movie was a bit overstuffed. But the bottom line is this: this is a darker, weirder, vision than the Sam Rami films, and although this vision is not as stirring, it is a legitimate telling.
A triumph, because it proves that if a highly skilled filmmaker tries hard enough, a film can imitate the complexity of the comics. One of the best “X-Men” movies, ever! And it even rebooted the series, effectively, by erasing the tragedy of “X-Men: The Last Stand.” 🙂
JULY 6TH UPDATE: And, as a hard-core comicbook fanboy who bought the original story off the stands, I thought this was quite funny.
re: “Tell Me More”: Maybe NPR Needs To Give Up Trying To Program Shows For Black People
A Black media historian and proponent shouldn’t be indifferent to the cancellation of a national Black-created show, right? I mean, I hate to say what’s in this headline (I was a big fan of the struggle “Tell Me More” had relaying non-white experiences to the whitest, and elitist, audience in radio), but okay, these kinds of shows are not its kind of thing–particularly when the network is broke(ish) and had to cut back.
Maybe the spin NPR is doing is right this time. Michel Martin will get a larger audience for the perspectives she so expertly brings, and NPR will stop pretending it wants a Black-controlled editorial voice. This is the third NPR show that tanked, right? (The first radio “Tavis Smiley Show,” “News and Notes,” and now this!) It’s enough.
JUNE 2nd UPDATE: Below are my reactions (“tweets” of a sort) to the Steiner discussion (see the link “not its kind of thing” above)
————————————–
8:00 – NPR’s “future” is people of color? LOL! Okay, Peterson, let me get out my lyrics for the Optimist’s Anthem …… 😉
9-12:00 – Thanks, Jared, for setting them straight! *WHEW* (At an HBCU, huh? LOL!)
12:00 – “They SHOULD?” And I should be The Silver Surfer! LOL!
14:00 – They will “ride on the rims,” but they will buy new tires THEMSELVES; their vision is CLEAR.
17:00 – I could tell “Tell Me More” was trying hard to mainstream even further, because much of it was about Mom issues. I stopped listening to it because I’m not a Mom and probably will not be one in the future 🙂
18:00 – Damn, Jared! “White rule?” Can tell Pacifica doesn’t pay you! LOL!
20:00 – Diana Ross?!? Let’s just give Steiner some melanin right now! LMAO!!!
21:00 – Farai’s podcast is nationally syndicated on PRI. (She’s back in the game, without having to make a living doing so.) So she’s making the only argument that somebody from Harvard, in major media for 20 years, etc., can make. She’s not going to waste time on Pacifica when she can get, say, young white women to fund her.
24:00 – “Democratization of content?” Yeah, okay, Peterson, if you’re okay with having your own thing and 20 listeners…..
24-25:00 – There is no benefit of diversity if whites have to pay for things they don’t want!
26- 28:00 – WHEW! Thanks, Jared! They really don’t want to talk about how whites control this stuff, do they? 🙂 Except the white host! LMAO! (So an estimated 600 people read my Baraka stuff on imixwhatilike and The Root: so what? I’m not confusing access with agenda-setting!)
29:00 – Farai thinks she is going to be the “Black voice” of the next digital media forum that Zuckerberg and them, or billionaires like them, will put together! Ahh……now she makes sense! Well, good luck, Farai! I’ve been one of your biggest fans since Newsweek. One question to you, though: You are 45 next month, and why would they (the omniscient, omnipresent “they” 😉 ) want you when they can get the next Ivied, 25-year-old, surely bi-racial Farai who they can control, I dunno :)?
30:00 – Jared: yep! The DRAKE FORMAT!
32:00 – Peterson wants to be seen as radical as Jared, but also as an optimist. 🙂
33:00 – Farai doesn’t want to address Jared’s concerns, because it doesn’t get her any grants! (Jared: Do you notice you are the ONLY person mentioning Richard Prince’s column here? That says A LOT! Farai knows better, but all she can do is articulate her hustle.)
36- 38:00 – Tavis does a good job here breaking down the history of PBS/NPR, and his history with NPR. (Tavis once said he told NPR at the beginning of the deal: “I’m an activist who hosts a radio program, and I will continue to be so.”)
40:00 – “Budgets are moral documents” 🙂 Ah, the PK flow….. 🙂
41- 43:00 – “NPR doesn’t cut its research budget, I can tell you that.” 😉 And Tavis is now saying what Jared was saying.
43-45:00 – “Super-serve the white audience!” YES, Tavis! He is trying to bridge the gap between Jared and Peterson. Tavis is funny about his sounding WAAAAY too Black for NPR! LOL!
46:00 – Tavis is trying to be an optimist, but he agrees with Jared.
———————————
Asante Sana, Elombe Brath
A true public intellectual. Little known was the he was the graphic artist for Gil Noble’s “Like It Is,” and perhaps even less known was that he was the show’s unofficial international advisor.
He was sick for a long time.
A disciple of Carlos Cooks, another almost-forgotten Pan-African activist. (I’m glad Herb is still here to remember all these people.)
The above panel participation is from 1995, during the height of the “Free Mumia” campaign and the vigorous open discussion of slavery in Sudan.
ELOMBE BRATH: Presente!
[col. writ. 5/25/14] © ’14 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Elombe Brath, long-time Black Nationalist organizer and activist, has made his transition after a long career in the Black Freedom Movement.
Elombe, 77, made his passage on May 19th, a day not without irony, for this was the birthday of one of the men he most highly regarded: Malcolm X.
Brath fought numerous struggles, both cultural and political.
When he was 20, he and his brother, Kwame Brathwaite, founded the African Jazz Arts Society in Harlem, where they featured young artists from the community. They were jazz lovers and fans of such icons as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln.
He didn’t just love Black music and culture, he loved Black people, and in 1961 launched the “Black is Beautiful” Campaign, sponsoring shows in Harlem featuring the Grandassa Models -Black women adorned with full Afro hairstyles.
In 1975, he launched the Patrice Lumumba Coalition (the first independent President of the Congo), from which he worked against the racist apartheid government in South Africa. Fifteen years later, he would be a top organizer for Nelson Mandela, when he came to New York, in 1990.
Elombe Brath would work for the freedom of the Central Park 5, the five youngsters condemned in the media, imprisoned and convicted of a gruesome rape that none of them had committed.
Brath, although born in Brooklyn on September 30th, 1936, was a life-long son of Harlem – and there he lived and worked, with the ideas of his nationalist heroes, Marcus Garvey, Carlos Cooks and Malcolm X.
Brath, after a long struggle and illness, returns to his ancestors.
–©’14maj
Drums in the Global Village 